Titan beetle
The titan beetle is one of the biggest beetles in the whole world. It can be longer than a grown-up's hand is wide. It hides in the rainforests of South America and mostly comes out at night, so people rarely see it.
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Fun facts
A grown-up titan beetle lives for only a few weeks.
The females cannot fly, because they have no back wings.
Its grubs help the forest by turning old, dead wood into soft soil.
Insects breathe through tiny tubes in their bodies, not with lungs. That is one reason they cannot grow as big as a cat.
It is very secretive, so scientists still do not know much about how it lives.
Most asked questions about Titan beetle
?How big is the titan beetle?
It can be more than 17 centimetres long, which makes it one of the largest insects on Earth.
?Is the titan beetle dangerous?
It is not poisonous, but it can pinch hard with its strong jaws, so it is best not to touch it.
?What does a titan beetle eat?
The grown-up beetle does not eat at all. Only the grubs eat, chewing rotting wood.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Titanus giganteus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Cerambycidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Cerambycidae
- Lives on
- South America
Where the facts come from
- Titan beetle (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Didier Descouens. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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